(urth) Drotte-Roche mixup

[DAVID STOCKHOFF]

Great explanation, James. I also appreciate the discussion of the nature of chems---it explains half a dozen minor mysteries, not just one. And raises new ones for me:

Were Mamelta and Marble bio and chem versions of the same thing? empty vessels filled with stored souls with only the vaguest memories of Urth? Or did Typhon take existing brainwiped bios and put some in the Whorl and others into storage? What was (who were?) the source of chem personalities? can personalities be reproduced like an mp3 file, or is it only 1 per body?

And you must be right about leprosy. It's about the only thing I can think of that would cause a sibyl to lose a hand and certainly the only disease. Maybe syphilis, but that's unlikely for a sibyl---or is it? 

Either one would tend to shorten a life span, when we know Rose was old (or was that merely my impression based on her hands?), and then there is the question of how either would ultimately be cured in a world where either would be a problem in the first place. I guess preemptive amputation might stop leprosy. Maybe sometimes it just stops.

More new mysteries: did Betel and Rose therefore have the same disease? or was Betel a chem? If she was a chem, why was she made old?

if not, what chem did the hands come from? Were all female chems made to look human? Were some made to look old? Were the first sibyls chem crones? How does one get to be a sibyl anyway--can you have a shameful past life?

I think Rose would have been quite happy to accept crone arms, and as a sibyl she is supposed to be uninterested in the vanities of flesh anyway.

--- On Tue, 4/19/11, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Drotte-Roche mixup
> To: urth at lists.urth.net
> Date: Tuesday, April 19, 2011, 11:57 AM
> On 4/19/2011 6:49 AM, David Stockhoff
> wrote:
> > Rose's hands appear to be gloves of a kind, that seem
> to work on both bios and chems by covering the limb, not
> replacing it. That is, I doubt Rose actually lost her limbs
> and needed new ones---she merely lost the use of them due to
> extreme age.
> 
> On 4/19/2011 6:56 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> > It is far more likely that an ancient sibyl would lose
> the use of her hands than that she would get them blown off.
> Of course I'm just realizing this now.
> 
> Rose lost her hands due to amputation required from some
> slow flesh-destroying disease. Leprosy, to take a guess.
> When she visited Blood at his foster home when he was a
> child, she only had one of them.
> 
> " 'I remember when she lost her arm,' Blood told her. 'She
> used to pat me on the head and say, you know, my, he's
> getting big. One day it was a hand like yours--'
> 'It was this one.' Maytera Marble displayed it." ~ Chapter
> 10, Calde of the Long Sun
> 
> 
> On 4/19/2011 4:01 AM, soloviev at irit.fr
> wrote:
> >  I don't remember where it was said, maybe it is
> your own
> > deduction that they (Rose's hands) are not flesh,
> only
> > "realistically veined", because they could be
> "grafted"
> > to Marble? 
> 
> Who would graft them on to Marble? She did it herself.
> There is no reason to believe Marble had the medical
> knowledge to graft bio hands to her body.
> 
> " 'Is that really the same hand?' Blood eyed it curiously.
> 'Yes, it is. It's hard to change hands yourself, Bloody,
> because you have to do it one-handed. It was particularly
> hard for me, because by then I already had a great many new
> parts.  Or rather, I had RECLAIMED a great many old
> ones.' ~ Ibid (emphasis added. See the link below for why).
> 
> What I believe about chems and Marble/Rose is this:
> 
> 1) Rose's prostheses are old chem parts.
> 
> 2) The hands originally were used by old Maytera Betel, and
> that is why they were mocked to look old old ~ because there
> was a certain shame in where they came from.
> (Whatever one believes about those hands, a speculative
> theory is required to explain why a prosthesis made for a
> forty-something sibyl --when Rose lost her first arm--would
> have been mocked to look old. No woman is going to prefer
> such a thing.)
> 
> See here for my full explanation of Rose's hands
> http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/molybdenum.htm
> And, yes, Roy does has a visceral aversion to my
> explanation, but I'm not willing to accept that the trouble
> passages he himself acknowledges are a result of Marble
> lying or being confused. Nor do I find it credible that the
> hands were mocked to look old in order to keep Rose
> humble).
> 
> 3) I believe chems/robots were designed to be ensouled by
> mind-wiped/manipulated scans of humans. And that is why a)
> Rose's hands so happily absorbed her identity and memories,
> b) why the chems were so easily configured to receive the
> Ayuntamiento's consciousness, and c) why Marble remembers
> Urth's Short Sun but appears to have no actual memories of
> her service on Urth. This is also why female chems use
> perfume even though there is no reason to program such
> aesthetic desires into them.
> And, finally, that is why chems are persons. As
> Rose-in-Marble said, "I am still a person, because I always
> was."
> 
> J.
> 
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